Dear Amr,

First of all you need to understand your context. Is your problem statement being written on its own or as part of a longer document, e.g. a proposal.

Secondly, you need to understand the purpose of your problem statement. Is it to clarify the problem you are planning to address in your study, or to establish that it is unique, or to provide a rationale for studying it.

Thirdly, you need to consider an appropriate length of statement, e.g. an approximate word count. Longer does not necessarily meet better. You are looking for a clear, convincing argument of an appropriate length.

Fourthly, one you have established a suitable word count, split up the statement into a number of paragraphs. We recommend an average paragraph length of 125 words. Write down one main point for each paragraph and make sure they are in a logical order. Then you can write your paragraphs around your points.

Finally, the argumentation style of the proposal should be single argument/opinion and the conclusion of the final paragraph should be equivalent to the sim of your study.

iam interesting

Dear Amr,

First of all you need to understand your context. Is your problem statement being written on its own or as part of a longer document, e.g. a proposal.

Secondly, you need to understand the purpose of your problem statement. Is it to clarify the problem you are planning to address in your study, or to establish that it is unique, or to provide a rationale for studying it.

Thirdly, you need to consider an appropriate length of statement, e.g. an approximate word count. Longer does not necessarily meet better. You are looking for a clear, convincing argument of an appropriate length.

Fourthly, one you have established a suitable word count, split up the statement into a number of paragraphs. We recommend an average paragraph length of 125 words. Write down one main point for each paragraph and make sure they are in a logical order. Then you can write your paragraphs around your points.

Finally, the argumentation style of the proposal should be single argument/opinion and the conclusion of the final paragraph should be equivalent to the sim of your study.

Good question, I am following the contributions to the question

A persuasive statement of problem is usually written in three parts:

Part A (The ideal): Describes a desired goal or ideal situation; explains how things should be.

Part B (The reality): Describes a condition that prevents the goal, state, or value in Part A from being achieved or realized at this time; explains how the current situation falls short of the goal or ideal.

Part C (The consequences): Identifies the way you propose to improve the current situation and move it closer to the goal or ideal.

There are many common points lead to a weakness in the problem statement such as:

1) Unable to clearly identify the research problem.

2) Often confused with research questions of the study.

3) The problem is not encouraging enough for the researcher to read further.

4) Not data driven i.e. NO citations.

5) More than 300 words.

6) Not focused with the research subject.

How to write a strong and well explained problem statement? what advice to avoid weakness and common mistakes?

A problem statement should be a concise & crisp statement illustrating the research issue / problem that a researcher intends to resolve. It can be worded based on the research gap(s) identified, conflicting scientific views / evidences to date or lack of empirical evidence to support certain claims etc.

The writeup should be convincing, brief, straight to the point and explain the exact problem that demand immediate research inquiry and give enough justification for the existence of the problem (the evidence of an academic vacuum in related studies). Best regards

Dickson

Statement of problem is an integral part of any study. It must be clearly identified and stated. A brief shortfall of the problem and how you wish to improve it should also be stated. It can be summarised as follows

1. Identify the problem

2. The possible challenges the problem may constitute?

3. How do you want to improve on the problem

It may be clear and illustrate the problem nature in aright and strength expression language and give a clear imagination for the reader.

thank you all for your answers. If we will suggest a template or a general sequence of a problem statement what should be the flow of ideas you suggest?

These suggestions will facilitate to researchers to write their problem statement clearly and effectively.

dear in brief and easy way, you should point the problem in general then connect it to your problem to make it a specific

regards

In one of my research classes for my dissertation, it was suggested that we use the following 5 questions as a guide in writing our problem statement. They were cited from pp.23-24 of Sagor, Richard. (1992) How to conduct collaborative action research. Alexandria, Va. : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

1) Who is affected?

2) Who or what is suspected of causing the problem?

3) What kind of problem is it? (e.g., a problem with goals, skills, resources, time, etc.?

4) What is the goal for improvement?

5) What do we propose to do about it?

Excellent informative inputs from all!

Having identified the appropriate research topic and selecting the research problem, to write a concise problem statement or statement of the problem will automatically fall in place. Researchers most times experience difficulty in writing the problem statement because the research topic is not properly formulated.

For instance there is a topic on women education: the idea is to identify the appropriate learning method to adopt in educating rural women. The topic is vast and the researcher may not easily get the problem statement because is it about learning styles, learning methods or teaching methods?

But if the topic is written as thus: Analysis of learning approaches to educate women, statement of the problem regarding the topic will be easy, you then start talking about the conservative approaches like behaviorist, cognitive etc learning approaches that may not have achieved the desired objective to a more conventional method adopting the new learning approaches in form of problem based learning- acquiring skills and learning through experience to psycho-motor learning demonstrated by physical skills. etc.

This will form your statement of the problem to avoid common mistakes and errors often experienced when writing a problem statement.

Mercy,

Thank you for the insight. Constructing problem statements are a challenge.

V/r,

Evelyn